What I'm about to write, I've kept it in for exactly twelve months. I've told a handful of people some bits and pieces, but there are angles to this story that I've always held back because I felt the duty to protect something that - to be honest with you - has done nothing but damage to me in return. I'm about to write about the stages of a grief I have felt too ashamed to declare. Because no one died, really. Yet something did. And my therapist said I should write my grief out. So here we go...
19th of February 2023
A date I will probably take to my grave.
A date that's always in the back of my mind, like a parasite. Yet it gives me hope that I've had other dates like that in my life, which one year after many painful ones I realized I had lived through without remembering. I can't wait for the 19th of February to be just another Tuesday.
For now though, that was the day I lost my best friend.
Like I said, nobody died. But I don't really feel like sugarcoat it to avoid drama. In order to be grief there has to be a death and what died on that day, even though I didn't know yet, was effectively a friendship.
I think I've never really got rid of the pain I felt that night, when I suddenly felt like an intruder, a stranger, a burden in a house that for the longest time had been a second home.
I was playing Hogwarts Legacy at 1am in my best friend's house when he texted to say I was being replaced. Funny how Harry Potter is always there in the most defining moments of my existence...
My best friend, my male best friend, was taking a girl home. Something he had done before, but he had never asked for my permission. Which could only mean this was not supposed to be a one night stand. This girl was coming into his life, into my life, and there was nothing, at the time, that terrified me more.
I can never stop to think about what I felt in the moment, because if the memory gets a hold of me it would suck me back into a vortex of sadness and hopelessness I no longer have the energy to swim back from. All I allow myself to remember is a song, the only song that kept my head above water that entire night.
Sometimes I think I haven't actually ever swimmed back.
Sometimes I'm so afraid to find myself still stuck in that Uber, running away from an event I couldn't control, nothing short of panicking as I choked back the most desperate tears I've ever shed. Sometimes I'm so afraid to find myself abandoning all my weight and strength on my bed sheets again, when I finally got home and burst into tears. I still remember the fear, because in that moment I genuinely thought if something so beautiful could be broken, then I was surely destined for intolerable physical pain. The thought genuinely crossed my mind, that that was just one event of many horrible ones lining up in that very instant to start showing up at my door.
Fear of loneliness, fear of illness, fear of death.
I know it sounds terribly dramatic, but that night, between not knowing who to call to be so vulnerable with and holding my head that felt like cracking open from the tears, I genuinely believed I had been given the most precious friendship ever because it was time for me to die soon.
Okay Manu. Put the Nicholas Sparks books down.
Well, I didn't die. That night, nor any night after.
But I've certainly paused life, afraid as I was that some other piece could fall off the wagon.
My phone buzzed the whole night.
I'm not gonna backtrack that WhatsApp chat because I will not purposely jump into the memory, but of all the messages I received that night, while my heart shattered and my best friend's blew up, I remember three of them:
"I feel infinitely guilty."
I had left him his favourite red velvet cake because he had a stressful shift at work. I don't regret doing it, but I did feel so stupid back then. We had built a whole friendship on leaving each other treats as a sign of support, but I realized in that moment - and would have many times in the following months - that it could, would never beat sex in his book. And I couldn't, wouldn't give him that. All I had was cake. Undying support - which you'd think took priority over everything else, silly you - and cake.
"Manu, say something."
I wanted to, but I couldn't.
Could I?
I have debated this for so long...Would it have made a difference if I had put my loyalty aside to text back "Please don't"?
Spoiler: in twelve months I've been given one too many examples of just how much he wouldn't have cared to stop. And me, still trying to live up to a standard of friendship I believed we had promised each other but has since then revealed itself pretty unilateral, would have later actually told him to "go for it, even if it breaks me. Don't worry about me."
He surely took my word for it and maybe that's why I struggle to let go of my anger sometimes...Because I gave him my blessing. Of course I did it on the basis of him always protecting our friendship, but there are so many parts of this story I misread, blinded by trust and hope. I gave him my blessing and I couldn't now - or ever - let that backfire on him.
"Don't hate me."
Maybe I really should have...maybe not back then, but at some point in the next few months. Everyone in my life believes he deserves it. But of all the emotions I have navigated thanks and because of him, hate was never one of them.
Oh it would be so much easier if I could bring myself to hate him. Like in that scene in Bruce Almighty, when Jennifer Aniston begs God to make her stop loving Jim Carrey. I am proud of the way I've cared about him, it has helped me grow in ways I am so glad for, but oh my god this story could have been so much shorter if someone had listened to that prayer for me (because I have spoken it). And to be quite frank, all that growth has just made me more aware of how unfair this whole situation is and I would have probably enjoyed oblivion more, once or twice.
When I told the story of that night, everybody (except one person) immediately assumed I was in love with him. And everybody probably meant well, but in reality what I heard was "platonic love shouldn't hurt this much", or "if you're not in love with him, then whatever you're feeling isn't normal."
It wasn't valid.
It is taking me 12 months and some to get control of myself again because unless I admit to be in love with him I am not allowed to feel this loss.
Everybody also always said "if you're in love with him that's completely okay".
Was it though? Do you have any idea how many times people had assumed we were a couple? How many people would have sworn on their life that we were meant for each other? How many times we had denied it, joked about it, dismissed it? I have actually wondered if he dismissed it because I did or if I've dismissed it because I always assume people are not interested, but I couldn't - physically couldn't - entertain the thought that I had been sitting right in the middle of everything I had always wished for - that Chandler&Monica trope - without noticing and that I had let someone else sweep it from under my nose. To this day I cannot linger on the possibility of that "what if". "What ifs" aren't a thing. There is only the painstaking truth that I had felt at my highest and wholest as his best friend and yet my highest and wholest hadn't been enough for him.
The truth that he had chosen someone so excruciatingly similar to me, but younger, more spontaneous, more physical. The new and improved me. The upgrade. The me without all the issues, the me you didn't have to work for, to work with.
The truth that whatever kind of love we had shared - and I promise it didn't really matter to label it - was beautifully true, envy material and still not enough.
Our friendship had to go.
For him, to let him be free of responsibility and let him steer clear of uncomfortable conversations, his kryptonite.
For her, to ease her insecurities, even though she had willingly, masterfully designed to enter a relationship with a guy whose best friend was a girl.
For everyone else, because - again - if it's only friendship you feel, you're not allowed to grieve. You're supposed to be okay with being tossed aside.
It was a premeditated, collective crime.
I just hadn't found the body yet, so I would keep on believing to find it alive, this friendship, every next morning when I opened my eyes.
For an entire, awful year.
DENIAL
We were supposed to meet the next day. We had begged and bribed our manager to give us the night shift together and we were planning to watch Stranger Things and play Hogwarts Legacy throughout the day before work.
Another me would have disappeared, bailed, left him to wonder why.
Another me would have run and - once again - maybe I should have.
Yet there had always been something about him that made me want to be better, made me want to stop guilt tripping, made me want to communicate in a quieter way, made me want to trust. I don't think I've always kept up with that will, as rooted habits are hard to eradicate, however the instinct was always there and would always eventually bring me back around.
I remember seeing the open sofa bed in the living room as I walked in, I remember the urge to run away, disappear, all the way there and then from his very doorstep. That sofa bed foreshadowed a struggle I still carry with me: that even when I don't see it, the thing, the issue, this death is somewhere around me. As alive as ever. She wasn't there, nobody informed me as to who had occupied that bed the night before, but there wasn't really any need to guess, right?
His flatmate was home, so we put Stranger Things on and I tried to focus on one of my favourite things ever.
It was season 4, the season of Will telling Mike he's afraid to lose him without actually saying it; the season of Eleven keeping the door open three inches, hoping for Hopper to come back against all odds; the season of Lucas being broken up with Max and yet still knowing something's wrong with her; the season of Steve and Robin being the most powerful duo and of Steve taking care of Nancy when Jonathan isn't there.
The season of "Mike, you're the heart."
I know now, after a whole year of therapy, that I was the heart. But back then, on that foggy damp morning in West Ealing, in my best friend's living room that so familiarly smelled like laundry and weed, I was sure he was the heart and I couldn't breathe at the idea of losing it.
But he was just a friend and I wasn't allowed to think it.
His flatmate walked out about fifteen minutes into the episode and he immediately paused and "We should talk."
"I don't know what to say."
If you know me, you know that's weird.
I was tired, my head was still splitting open and I still desperately wanted time to freeze so that I didn't have to face the consequences of that day.
I thought of all the times we had discussed him getting into a relationship and me having to step away because "It is very unlikely that a girl would accept her boyfriend to have a female friend".
I thought about all the times he had said "You will be in the relationship agreement. I will not let that happen."
All the times he promised "If someone asks me to choose, the choice is made by them because I shouldn't have to choose."
And I thought about our song, by a band she loves and I now despise:
"...and I just keep on thinking how you made me feel better
and all the crazy little things that we did together.
In the end....
in the end it doesn't matter if
tonight is gonna be the loneliest.
You'll be the saddest part of me."
A song, you guessed it, about grief.
A grief I wasn't allowed to acknowledge.
"All I know is I didn't sleep," I mastered the courage to whisper. Pleading.
Please stop this, you're the only one who can.
Don't make me go through this.
"Because of me?" he asked.
I smiled because in that moment I could still feel our connection would step and stand over everything else.
"Yes."
He took a cushion, slammed it over his entire face and sighed a sorry "No, Manu!"
Even to him, I was not allowed to feel this.
We spoke for about twenty minutes and again, I remember three things with searing clarity:
1) "We complete each other because you overthink and I don't think at all."
Our friendship died from both of us repeatedly proving this statement right.
2) Me almost saying I was in love with him, just to be entitled to my feelings. Thank god I didn't.
3) How right had I been in not disappearing, in showing up, in allowing him to prove to me I was always going to be important. A lie in the making which enabled my denial. Because no matter how much I try to excuse him, if he had really cared for me enough, something in my pain should have pushed him to make different choices. Not necessarily end things with her...not choosing a side, not cutting me off would have been a good enough start for me.
You know, I'm low maintenance like that.
We had many conversations like that one, conversations where I tried to let him understand I was falling apart not because he had a girlfriend, but because he had stripped me of my role in his life, conversations where I thought he was saying "I am not leaving you", conversations that masked a truth so bitter to swallow: yes we had a connection, but to him I was just filling a gap while he waited for more, for better. Now better had arrived and nobody likes living with the knowledge you're breaking someone's heart, so he kept that connection alive with a lot of unforgettable perfect words and I - not allowed to feel the grief and not ready to let go - believed every single one of them.
"She's too young, this isn't going anywhere."
"That's a red flag."
"If you wanna be with me you have to accept Manu."
"You're my favourite person ever."
"I am a constant."
"Why do you think I climbed that mountain to take a picture? I don't give a shit, but you do and I wanted to do it for you."
Time would lead me to believe I really tried.
I didn't run.
From the start.
Before he began cutting me out, when the only problem was my fear of abandonment, I went to her and asked her to please not force me out, I asked her to allow me to tell him I loved him like I had always done when he was single and I asked her to allow me to spend time with him, I assured her I had no intention of being cause of jealousy and I asked her if she maybe would be interested in being friends.
I asked her permission.
Me, the one who was there first.
That qualifies as trying, right?
Her answer has been resonating in my brain almost every day for twelve months: "Manu, you know I love you, right? I know about your relationship, I would never come between you two."
Well, if she loves him like she loved me, that's some romance you have there.
Her answer and the lies it concealed even back then, on day 2, is the number one reason why I will never believe she's the right one for him. And the number one reason I have been so angry for such an excruciating, annoyingly long time.
Because even though she actively, cunningly broke that promise and took steps to manipulate his weaknesses and pushed me out of his life, at the end of the day he let her.
So I got angry at her for openly disrespecting the most precious thing I had going on and I got angry at him for looking the other way.
I was only ready to focus on one of the two, though.
At the time.
ANGER
This next part I can't really tell it in chronological order, because even though the stage is behind me, the feeling is always there. Still.
Now, I know I sound like a victim and I know somewhere out there there must be a portion of people boohoo-ing me and very rudely encouraging me to "get over it". These are probably the same people who have read and yet skipped over the many moments when I pointed out how I was made feel not allowed to feel my grief. The same people who probably lack both the reading and understanding skills as well as the emotional empathy and depth to grasp the meaning of my entire story. People I passionately do not give two shits about.
Yet, I know I sound like a victim, but I believe there's some objectivity to one truth: some things have been done to me that I never got an apology for and it is so inexplicably hard to get over a supposedly unjustified anger. Even more so, when that anger goes completely unacknowledged.
Fast forward six months.
She had kicked off a competition between us that I wanted absolutely no part in. I just wanted him to be clear to both of us what role we played in his life, but the vibe between me and her - particularly when we hung out without him - had started to feel off, so I put some distance between us.
You don't have to be best friends with your best friend's partner, as long as you stay civil.
It's July. His birthday arrives.
I don't get invited until 6pm on the day, when I text him to know if there was a plan and she texts me back to say "We're heading home now, I'll let you know at around 8pm where we will be but don't ask him anything else."
Even ignoring the fact I absolutely was not going to sit around waiting to be summoned, I showed up at the "party" to find out his other friends had known for - compared to the notice I had been given - ages.
Have you ever found yourself in a room with the stinking feeling you've been a topic of conversation many times before and now everyone is watching you to gather data to discuss when you go?
I drowned my paranoia, second guessed my instincts, hugged him when he unwrapped my gift and left after a single drink.
He thought I was leaving because I didn't like pubs or hanging out with drunk people. He always thinks I don't do things because I don't like hanging out with drunk people, but even though I haven't had a sip of alcohol for basically my entire life, I do live in England. I've learned to manage. That is never the reason why I don't go places.
I debated for a few days whether I should ask him about that night.
Had I done something? Had he said something? But how do you approach that conversation? How do you ask "hey is your girlfriend trying to break us up or something?" without sounding unrightfully jealous?
Well, there isn't a way. Not when you're in a mixed gender friendship, there isn't.
Or if there is, I didn't find it.
Because when I - as carefully as ever, selecting words with the patience, attention and slight concern of a bomb disposal engineer - gave him evidence, he kindly gaslighted me:
"Don't you think it's all in your head?"
From there, we went through a spot of time - about a month or so - when we couldn't stop fighting and while I insisted on being more patient with him than I had ever been with anyone who had pissed me off in my life, he let himself go to words nobody - especially me - would ever believe he's capable of...Including the words that - he knew - have stabbed and murdered all my relationships and my self-esteem along with them:
"To you friendship is a relationship, but I don't wanna work that hard on it."
I never said he wasn't honest.
"Sometimes I feel like I'm juggling two relationships."
Bro, I feel like your mistress and we'd barely hold hands if our lives depended on it.
"It's too much. You're too much."
Hit and sunk.
That particular time my eyes instantly filled with tears and I had to go hide because we were actually at work.
I would later tell all my friends, the good ones, that "if there was one person in my life I was certain I'd never hear those words from, it was him."
My therapist will tell you I have never really got over that. No matter how much money I've paid her since then.
And I mean, inside I've never got over it, but I didn't leave.
Even then.
Even as he wielded Narsil and chopped off the Ring of Power from my finger, even as he Avada Kedavra-d my soul with those words, as the spell finally faded and he reduced himself to be just like everyone else, I found another chance in me to give him.
So a couple of weeks later, as the arguments continued, deepened by a wound he wasn't even aware he had inflicted, he exasperatedly asked:
"We used to never argue, I don't understand what's changed."
I looked at him with disbelieving frustration. "Yeah okay, I know what's changed," he admitted.
Rewind now.
What changed?
He did, mostly.
Or maybe not. Maybe that's exactly who he had always been.
The inconfutable truth, nevertheless, is that he pulled away.
He went from being the person answering the phone when my cat died, the person who lied in bed talking about my fears with me until 4am, the person who came up with a silly game ("Who would win...?") to distract me from anxiety whether i was on an airplane or just overwhelmed, the person who messaged me first whenever anything happened that could affect us - like getting a girlfriend, for example - to the person I couldn't reach for four days straight.
Oh man, those four days...
To this day I don't believe he fully understands the level of panic he left me in that week, when I couldn't figure out if his phone had just got stolen or if he had passed out in a ditch out of reach of humanity.
He doesn't know, he will never know, how I lost hours of sleep, worrying sick about him because I was the one who always knew what was going with him and if I didn't know then the only possible explanation was that something horrific had happened to him.
He kinda knows, but surely does not comprehend, how some people have taken those four days as a chance to instil and reinforce in me the provable fact he didn't care about me. A fact I would slowly grow to believe myself, but some people really jumped at the chance, right from the gate.
He doesn't know I cried for hours on the phone with my mom, one of those four nights, at 2am, when it got too dark within and around me to deal with this all on my own. He has no idea of the terror I dropped on my mom's heart when she picked up and all she could hear was my whimpering, because I could not utter a single word, draw a single breath. He doesn't know she'd later confess me she was deeply disappointed in him, although in the moment she had tried to convince me this was all the makings of envious people because "I don't even understand you when you're talking to him," - my mom can't speak English - "but anyone can tell your bond is special and that makes people want to destroy it. Don't let them."
You understand now, from that birthday anecdote, I have held on to that statement, maybe a little too tight. I have progressively consumed myself to defend this friendship, way past checkpoints that should have really convinced me - and with previous relationships would have actually convinced me - to drop it all.
Emotionally, I have felt like Tony Stark after his snap: the only way to win is for him to sacrifice himself. It doesn't matter if it should be Steve because he doesn't have a family, or Hulk because he could physically take it. Tony's the one with enough to lose to actually want to give his all. Leave no cards unturned. Even if it means you won't be there for the celebratory parade.
This is why I'm angry.
Because too many times a voice in my head has whispered to me that is the only plausible ending up ahead. No matter how right I've grown beside him, how much more and more fairly I have supported and loved him, how much better we make each other, how lucky we've got to stumble upon the same timeline, I can't shake off the feeling that the only acceptable epilogue will not include me.
He did pick up the phone after four days.
"I am indeed alive," he said.
Her arm had gone through some glass, she had to go to the hospital and the seriousness of it all had caused him to panic. So - the emotionally intelligent human being he is - up he went, to his parents' house, his hometown, disappearing from the face of the earth, pushing every single emotion down as if they didn't exist if nobody knew about them.
For four days.
With her.
It hadn't even been a month since the 19th of February and I had already been bumped from his speed dial.
But I couldn't be angry, right? He has a girlfriend now, of course you won't know stuff about him anymore. I've never asked my other friends in committed relationships, but I'm pretty sure I'd tell my best friend if I basically had a breakdown and felt the urge to run and go.
Even if I had my boyfriend with me.
Unless you're the cause of my breakdown, I'd tell anyone who cares about me. Sure, not in the moment, but not four days of total absence later either.
Had I been the cause, then?
Or was I just, simply, not important enough?
Don't know what makes me feel worse.
I had written him a letter after the 19th of February, because my brain was such a mess that I could only sort it out in writing. It took him over a month to read it. So long that he actually "lost it" at some point. And that had just built the belief in my head that he was either too scared to find out what I had said in my letter, or that he didn't care enough to help us. And in the end, when he resurfaced from those four days of breakdown, he told me he had melted because he had lost my letter, didn't know how to tell me, got too scared and ran away. And as honored and safe as I felt in hearing him say "I'm not scared of you, I'm scared of losing you," I am having a really hard time believing he wasn't just sucking up to me in that moment.
I believed him then, though. Because back then she was just a fling and it made total sense that I'd cause him such trouble.
So had I - my feelings or my letter - been the cause?
Or was I just, simply, again, not important enough? And stupid enough to believe his excuse?
Now now, Manu. Snap out of it. You know better than to put your ego over someone's mental health.
I do know better than that.
I've known so much better than that, that I've restrained my ego to claim its rightful spot over anything that had to do with him.
Ever since.
Which is probably also why I'm angry.
The problem with wanting to keep to yourself in front of a person who has instantly and always been able to read the best concealed parts of yourself though, is that he immediately knew something was cooking behind my eyes. So I saw no point in lying:
"I am 35 and the person who knows you better than anyone, with some personal experience about breakdowns and mental health. She's a child who's known you for less than a month. I would have loved to be there for you, but you chose her. And that's okay," - is it? - "you do you...but it did hurt like a bitch."
Remember when I said earlier that I have been given and I have ignored one too many signs of being replaced? That was the first one.
I should have really left it at that.
Just a handful of days into this whole mess.
I should have packed my self-worth and walked away.
But he was still saying he saw no future in that relationship and he was still saying he was sorry every time he hurt me, as if the revelation of my pain constantly surprised him and everyone was still saying we were special and I was still tired of losing people.
Deadly combo.
I stayed.
The arguments started because I took his word for it when he said she was a fling, so of course I granted myself permission to at least feel upset when a fling took priority over my established loyalty.
But the weeks began to pile up, the season was changing and the fling was still there.
And even before his birthday and the competitive vibe that would come later, I'm a woman. An overthinker, for sure, but a female one. The one who will panic either way, but can always differentiate between the passing overthinking and the one you should really worry about because it will solidify at one point. (In case you've missed the memo among all my rumbling, the fling has completed a full trip around the sun just a few hours ago. So you can guess I could feel it solidifying.)
At the time, I told my therapist I felt like I was maybe subconsciously creating arguments where there weren't any, just to provoke a reaction. Because of all the things I'm angry for, the main one, the one that is blocking the healing process, is absolutely the way every emotion bounces off of him. It doesn't matter how broken, how distant we get, nothing gets through to him.
Or at least nothing I am sending off in his direction.
And I know, I think I know, it's actually because he's too terrified to feel anything, but the result he produces by never trying harder for anyone is simply to make me feel like he doesn't care.
About me.
Arguing wears you out eventually, though.
It takes skills to argue.
Skills I am proud of possessing; I hang my arguing skills on display around my house, like the Memorabilia collection of the place where we work.
He even refuses to take those skills out of the basement.
And while it may look cute to people please, anyone with a basic grasp on their mental health will agree you need to open that box, the arguing box, and polish the content once in a while.
Arguing is a needed skill, crucial to your health if done right.
Go watch Inside Out if you don't get it.
Still, dusting off those skills daily is tiring, especially when you're doing it on your own while everyone else is off enjoying the nice weather.
So we planned a day to talk. The last time I was ever allowed in his house (ooooh the plot thickens).
We - I - spoke for an entire afternoon, biting back tears, pulling the leash on my anger to make sure it wouldn't scare him off...Talking to him about feelings often feels like dealing with a scared cat: you wanna help, you wanna reach out and let him feel you mean well, but you extend your hand too quickly and he'll run hide behind the washing machine.
They don't know the difference.
You need to measure your energy very carefully.
But I was always explosive.
Throughout all this mess, the one trait of me I have refused to feel bad about is the way I feel everything to the max.
Including anger.
"Whether she hates or loves you, you'd have to be really stupid not to know," a friend of mine once said.
I was always explosive, but I'd do anything to make sure he knows "I may hate you more, but I will never love you less."
Hell, isn't that what the point of it all is supposed to be anyway?
I don't remember exactly how we ended up there, as it slythered in between us with no warning...It must have been something we said between "I'm not gonna marry this one, but I'm not rushing to end things with her either" and "I did say you should do what makes you happy even if it breaks me, but I guess the underlying assumption was that it wouldn't make you happy in the first place, if it broke me."
How bold of me to assume I mattered.
All I know is we - I - decided to stop being friends.
It sounds just as stupid as it is.
You don't just stop being friends. You don't just stop feeling. Anything.
In friendship, much like in love or pain, there's a transition. A series of events that either slowly intensify or erase the core emotion.
Hurt someone once, they'll forgive you.
Twice, they'll make a face and hold on.
Three times, they'll start wondering why they stay.
Ten, they eventually see the way out you were showing them.
I would love to tell you that was my tenth time, but it wasn't.
It was barely the second.
We went through the night without saying a single word to each other, not because I didn't have anything to say, but because I needed him to speak first for once.
He didn't, of course.
And I remained explosive in my stubborness. In my anger. And alas, in my love and loyalty.
I sat there with him, side by side, the sleeves of our sweatshirts touching and as far away as we have probably ever been, watching Across the Spiderverse as our swan song.
He loves Spiderman so much, he would climb shelves and piles of boxes at work just to be able to say "I'm Spiderman!"
And if he was Spiderman - Peter or Miles - then I was Gwen Stacy:
"You and I...we're the same. In the important ways..."
"In every other universe, Gwen Stacy falls for Spiderman...and in every other universe...it doesn't end well."
I always turn to my favourite pieces of art to guide me through life and the timing of that movie, that night, left a bump that feels a lot like lack of bravery.
I heard her.
She was making me aware I'd have to gather strength from sources I had never explored in my life to be able to free both of us from this bond I wasn't destined for.
Because Gwen is not MJ.
Gwen is the wound in Spiderman's life, the wound MJ comes in to heal.
Gwen is the one only die hard fans - or Emma Stone's fans - remember. She's the one Spiderman jumps into the void to save because she matters that much to him in the moment, but when he can't save her, he eventually moves on. And when MJ comes in, everyone stops mentioning her.
Gwen Stacy is the one with the whole of the multiverse against her.
I didn't stand a chance.
I wasn't allowed to.
I wasn't expected to.
I wasn't meant to.
I wept in silence in the darkness, relieved and terrified that it would all be over as soon as credits rolled.
He didn't know. Or if he did, he didn't say.
I would love to tell you our connection, our chemistry, tickled his spidey sense and made him notice, but neither of us dared tapping into that well that night.
I wept, he watched the movie.
For the first time in two years neither of us knew what the other was thinking or feeling.
And then Gwen came back to voice the one simple reason why I do everything I do, why I put myself through therapy even: "I can't lose one more friend."
It will sound pathetic, but it will also sound a lot like me...that with damp cheeks and a heavy heart that had almost made it out, I let her save our friendship that night.
BARGAINING
I am not entirely sure I'm proud of staying. Sometimes I tell myself I'm a prize idiot. Even writing all of this, reading all of this makes me want to slap myself as hard as I can. But you know, another thing everyone will tell you about me (a thing he did say about me barely a week ago) is that I'm not the one who leaves, I'm the one who stays.
Often way past the due deadline.
Straight into stupidity.
And yet, I don't know that I'd change that about myself. Because when I eventually go, I can do it with a lighter heart, aware that I have fixed all that I could, including myself, but if the other part wasn't willing to do the same, then there was only so much I could do.
No matter the reasons, the point is I stayed.
The arguments became more rare, not so much from an increased effort but more from a determination to drown them.
The time together simply stopped to be a thing, except for work.
After two years of leaving his house at 4am three times a week, it is now silently agreed that I shall never step into it again.
If we hang out outside of work is because of someone else's plan, like a birthday party or a staff night out.
We had a holiday planned in November, that he told me "I don't wanna go on, but I also don't want not to go on." Code for "my girlfriend will kill me if I go away with you, but I lack the guts to both tell you the truth and make her feel secure in this relationship." Although of course, she now basically lives with him, attends every gig and family gathering and doesn't even walk ten minutes alone from the tube station to his door, while I am lucky if I get two matching shifts a week with him.
People keep telling me - as if I'm too stupid to know - that it's normal to spend less time with your friends when they or you enter a romantic relationship. But with all due respect, if you suddenly go from 100 to nothing with your best friends just because you have someone new in your life, you're either a teenager, a sex addict or (with) a toxic person.
And if you make your friends feel bad for daring to claim a spot in your life, a spot you should be giving without being asked, then you're just a prick.
But back to my story...
So Gwen Stacy convinced me to try once more.
And because I wanted to believe - I still do believe - this friendship was too special, I listened.
"I don't want us to stop being friends," I exhaled after the movie ended.
"I don't want that either! I'm so glad you said that!"
As mad as I've been with him, I do think there's some truth to that.
Even though that's his name on my phone, he is not a total dickhead.
Hopefully.
"Can you try a little bit harder though?" I whined, still somewhat heartbroken.
"I promise I will! If anything, tonight has shown me that I am getting a little too close to lose you and maybe that's the kick in the butt I need to step up."
Many conversations would follow, where he'd point out he was trying and I'd have to highlight how he wasn't. Or better, he was...but just long enough to keep me happy enough. Then he'd slip, I'd get mad and he'd make me feel awful for holding him accountable, as if the fact he was trying should excuse him until his dying day and I'd just have to be okay with it. And I'm sure I've made him feel awful in a bunch of other instants as well, but I'm pretty sure everyone could testify I was always triggered first, I was reacting. He just acted like that. Spontaneously. Consciously.
On top of that, throughout all of this, I struggled to bite my tongue every time I wanted to show him her part in this game, but I wouldn't dare doing it, out of fear of being gaslighted again. My defense from her was to remove myself from any situation that would have us in the same room, mostly to avoid her getting the chance to be perfectly fake nice to me in front of him, once again out of fear of him telling me it was all in my head.
A friend once asked "Aren't you letting her win, then?"
Yes. I was.
I was determined not to engage in this competition and I couldn't have it on my heart to wonder if he was spending time with me because I wanted to or because he wanted to. I wasn't going to force this, not to play hard to get, but simply because - despite my self-worth being dangerously in shambles - I still knew to save my thinning energy for people who craved it, not settled for it.
Let her win.
I was doomed from the start, anyway.
Lastly, as the grown up in this unintended triangle, I only cared about our friendship and therefore focused on him alone. As our security manager told me once, "don't make her relevant." And I hated it, because I would hate for my best friend to hate or ignore my boyfriend, but then again I know I would never not acknowledge that if they ended up competing it would be at least 80% my fault.
I had chosen to keep him in my life despite not being allowed in his.
I had to figure out a way to make it work.
And although it worked, I think in retrospect I've made it work by shrinking and denying my needs.
I stopped writing him cards because I didn't wanna feel the stupidity of trusting him to read it first thing in the morning.
I began walking away from him whenever he pulled out his phone, because I didn't wanna know just how many times he instantly texted everyone back, compared to how many hours I was left on read.
I unfollowed him and his band on social media, because I didn't wanna see how unbothered he seemed while I still found it hard to fall asleep at night. And I snapped at all those people who were rightly unaware of my chaos, but who still thought he was my best friend, assumed I knew everything that was going on with him and used his relationship as an ice-breaker in conversations.
I had to learn to practice to look away from our holiday calendar at work, because I didn't wanna know in advance when he was going away. Remember, our friendship only existed at work and if we weren't at work I didn't exist.
I looked away from everything that made me feel unease and instead highlighted the scraps he tossed me.
When he ordered my food before my break at work.
When he surprisingly messaged me back within twelve hours.
When he came to ask if I was okay, when I went hiding in the kids section of the shop on particularly heavy days.
When he took the tube home with me and occasionally, spontaneously walked me to my door.
When he said kind words to me, that revealed shadows of how well he had known me.
When he triggered one of my panic attacks, but called all my best friends to find someone who could help.
"You're enough. I just need you to shut up," I told him, my face drenched with tears and buried in my trembling hands, before he phoned the only other person I would have wanted with me through that...through the entire year, actually.
When he left work early on the same day to take me home and stayed with me to make sure I was okay. And he told me about the last time he had cried. And he told me he stayed with her because she "had proven herself to him". Even though it made me feel like I had given him my best too and yet that hadn't stopped him from tossing me aside.
When we shouted at each other one late night, but went to a leaving party the next day and we apologized to each other when we were left alone, before going down a slide like the forever children we both are.
When we walked home alone on the same night and he asked if I wanted to talk.
And I asked him if he had ever actually loved me.
And he told me that he could have never faked it that well for that long.
And he told me that if he didn't care he wouldn't spend so much time arguing and making up, because "you know I hate confrontations and you know they drain me."
And I asked him if I could somehow lower my expectations, even though I still held a grudge against her because I asked her not to ruin this and she did precisely that, could we - me and him - be able to coexist somehow?
And he replied that we could, only if that was enough for me, because he knew I expected more from people than he was clearly incapable of giving.
And I told him I had been afraid the whole day that this was the End, an end Gwen Stacy couldn't have saved us from.
And I told him I wasn't at the point yet, where I wanted nothing to do with him.
And he looked me in the eyes - 2am across the street from his door - a loving spark in his look (which I don't know how to believe anything less than genuine) and asked me to give him a hug.
And he wrapped his right arm around my neck while I held on to his chest as tightly as I held on to our bond, but - I don't know how I remember this detail - for the first and only time he also lifted his left arm and placed his hand on my shoulder.
Maybe just because.
Maybe as a way of silently saying he cared.
He was still afraid of losing me.
He hated this situation as much as me.
He was sorry for not being able to make it better.
I somehow made it work. Not nearly as perfectly as I wished, since I noticed I was starting to get anxious just being around him, simply for fear of hearing details of his life I had to force myself to stay away from. And on some days it's still just as horrible as that first day in February, when I am particularly vulnerable and can't silence the voice in my head that still claims this whole thing started and will eventually end because I am too much and not enough at the same time.
But i've made it work.
And whenever those horrible days hit, I travel back to two specific events in recent times: Lacock and the Disney Exhibition.
Lacock is a village in the Cotswolds, near Oxford, famous as one of the most iconic Harry Potter filming locations.
We went there on a day trip, the day after my birthday.
I had asked him to accompany me because we had this tradition to visit filming locations and take photos of them while holding a picture of the movie frame, a tradition that had taken us to Italy and Scotland before. Sure, I could have done it alone, but it turns out I suck at framing that kind of photos and he enjoyed teasing me and showing off that talent of his.
Also, being nerds was our love language. I couldn't have done that with anyone else.
I remember the anxiety, a constant companion since February, while we had breakfast in Ealing and then boarded the train. He had paid for my coffee and studied the frames I had printed, saying things like "This will be tricky, but we'll make it happen."
Always the optimist.
Yet, he wasn't as lively and chirpy as usual and even though I repeated myself he just wasn't a morning person and would normally take him a couple of hours to fully wake up, I stayed terrified the whole time, that he didn't actually want to - or could - go on this trip but he just didn't know how to tell me.
At the time he was obsessed with a phone game, similar to Candy Crush but not exactly that. I remember gently letting him know it was okay for him to play on the train, he didn't have to entertain me...And even that made me feel apprehensive, because how could he not know I wanted him to be absolutely free to be himself around me? How could he not know I also wanted things to be easier?
He had grown to believe I wanted all of his time, when all I had ever wanted was not to be forgotten, even if I wasn't physically there.
The anxiety stayed with me the whole day, but I didn't voice it.
"He's here. We're here. Stop worrying. What more could he do?"
But to be honest with you, looking back now, I don't remember any of that. Not if I don't force myself to remember.
What I remember, the first feeling that surrounds me from the inside if I linger on the memory of that day, is a complicity, a gentleness, a care I hadn't felt since February and I still have to replicate since then.
The same complicity that - because I have seen it and felt it - single-handedly push me to stay against everyone's better judgment.
During the day I stopped to pet a cat in front of the Potters' house. He stayed a few steps back.
I kneeled down on the gravel, extended one finger to let the cat familiarize with my scent and then stroked his back for a good couple of minutes. I let my hair fall to cover my face and I breathed back the tears that were always ready to flow. And I wondered if he could still, if he could ever again, feel the insides of my heart from across a room.
I wondered if - should he, my best friend, never come back to me - I would ever find that same connection with anyone again.
I grieved. For a few seconds, away from his eyes. I grieved the perfect companion he had been and the blissful woman I used to be by his side. I grieved all the emotions nobody thought I should grieve. And maybe that is precisely why that cat had stopped and waited for me to approach him...If you know cats, you'll know what I mean.
And then I stood up and walked back to him, smiling because "cats".
Hours later I discovered he had taken a picture of me while I was petting that cat.
I love that picture.
Everything I am is in that picture: I am wearing one of my favourite sweatshirts, I love the shape of my body even though it's not what social standards dictate as beautiful, there's a cat there which isn't even hinting at moving away and there's a Harry Potter location in the background. And my once best friend, possibly the most significant and defining person I will ever cross paths with, took the photo without me asking.
I've wondered why he decided to take it, but all the answers I've been giving myself I've dismissed them as wishful thinking. I can't ever ponder the possibility that our connection still stretches between us without ever breaking, I can't entertain the hope we are each other's red thread.
I settled on the idea he just had his phone in his hand and just so happened to capture the turning point instant of my year of grief.
I had to make this downsized friendship work and in order to succeed I had to stop assuming he still held a special spot for me in his life.
On the way back to the station his mood seemed to be getting worse, not angry, just gloomier and after a couple of times of me asking if everything was okay he admitted he felt sick. He's such a delicate lad, getting a cold from not sleeping enough and getting cramps and nausea when it gets a little windy.
My motherly instinct kicked in and with a tenderness literally no one in my circle has ever heard from me, I offered to wait for the next train and get a hot drink to calm his stomach. I knew he was feeling really sick when he agreed to my plan without pretending "it's fiiiine, it's gonna be okay."
I let him order our teas because I don't understand english tea and we sipped it while sitting in front of the station cafe's window overlooking the parking lot. I knew he felt awful, because I know he likes the comfort of his home especially when he's feeling a little bit unease (four days in his hometown and no contact with the world because he was feeling too many things at once, remember?), but I was there with him and I would have done everything in my power to make it all better.
I would have absorbed his pain with my bare hands.
Well, I couldn't do that, but I could be absolutely incapable of drinking tea from a take away cup and even though that wasn't on purpose, it made us both laugh.
Eventually we boarded the train, he slowly felt better, we even had a few minutes of meaningful conversation about how he missed a friend of his who had cut him off with no warning (ironic) and decided to go to my house to watch about 8 hours of Star Wars content.
I remember three things, as usual:
1) I fully expected him to want to go home as soon as we were back in London, so it surprised me when he suggested we'd do an unplanned movie night.
2) He fell asleep on my couch around 10pm, probably due to a combination of an early rise and his stomachache, and I felt this rush of affection because how relieving is it to see someone you care about at peace after seeing them in pain?
3) Andor's adoptive mother, from the Star Wars series we had landed on that night, pronouncing the line "I love him more than anything he could ever do wrong" just as I let myself feel that affection.
I did. I still do. We may not be destined to be in each other's life forever, but whenever, however I take my exit, I will not hate him.
Like I said, I am the heart.
The Disney Exhibition happened two months later.
I had bought tickets with my parents, but at some point it seemed like they couldn't travel to London, so I asked him and another friend of ours to go together.
I was expecting something to go wrong and sure enough it did.
He messaged me at midnight the night before, asking why we were going to the exhibition together if my parents had actually made it to London.
I played dumb and explained the reason why, but I knew a question like that, even though it was coming from him, was not his doing. I wondered if she had planted the doubt in his mind that I had lied about my parents not coming just so that I could have an excuse to invite him. I don't know, I will never probably know, if I was right, but for the sake of argument I'll point out that if I had wanted to orchestrate something like that, I would not have invited anyone else.
Still, my mind spiralled.
Would he really believe I'd lie to him like that? Did he really think me that pathetic? Above all, had her claws sunk that deep into his skin that he couldn't discern my actual behaviour from her jealousy?
"Please don't let this linger in the air the whole night. Tell me what's going on," I begged him, as patiently as I could, against my basic instincts.
I wouldn't hear from him until 6am the next morning. Needless to say, I slept something like 20 minutes all together that night.
They had argued the whole night because apparently he had promised her to go to the exhibition for her birthday; he had never bought tickets, she had never mentioned it for a whole month after and threw a fit when she found out he was going to go with me.
He spared me the details of the argument and I pray to every single god our entire race believes in, that the words I imagine were said were not actually said.
"I'm sorry i'm letting you down again," he told me at the end of a frantic, apologetic, pitiful text.
And I hated her for making him feel like that.
I saw the manipulation behind the whole argument, the way she had used his forgetfulness to make him feel guilty, because yes he has a tendency to forget plans, but he also always remembers them at the last minute in the end. If he hadn't remembered that even after a whole night of arguing, I genuinely do not believe that promise was ever actually made.
But he'd believe it.
He'd believe to be both a horrible, cheating boyfriend and disappointing best friend.
And I wasn't going to fuel that belief. I wasn't going to stretch him in eighteen different directions. Even if he was consistently choosing people who took advantage of his people-pleasing, even if I had more reasons than anyone in his life to punch him in his guts, I wasn't going to be part of that group.
"I'm not mad, not even one bit." I really wasn't. I don't know why. Therapy, I guess. "And you don't have to come to the exhibition if it's such a problem or if you're exhausted from arguing. Just please don't shut down. I know you think it makes it easy, but I promise it just hurts you more."
I genuinely thought he'd run away to his parents for four days again...which I mean, it would be fine if he really needed it, but I needed to reiterate I was there for him.
Always.
Particularly if he had the slightest doubt I was gonna leave.
We never talked about that day.
I bought him a Spiderman funko pop at the exhibition and gave him a hug before proceeding to fall off the stairs when he came to my house later that evening, but I didn't want to - nor need to - know about the details of that argument.
All I knew was I was on the right path. For myself.
She could pin all her insecurities on me, dictate the rules of his freedom and free will, forbid our friendship, but for the first time in the entire year it was suddenly clear to me that none of it was actually my fault.
I had dropped my expectations, stayed away from him every time it wasn't necessary, kept my thoughts about their relationship to myself, I had done everything I could to remove myself from her radar except actually disappearing from the face of the earth.
If that was still not enough for her to feel valued and safe, if she could still find excuses to make him feel bad about whatever he was giving her, if she couldn't see he had taken stuff away from all of us in his life to give it all to her, if she still felt like their relationship wouldn't sustain unless they were physically together or constantly in touch all the time, then the cause was to be searched inward.
I had nothing to do with it.
That epiphany and the effortless complicity that simply existed between me and him even as I actively tried to push it in the basement locker of my persona...Those are the two thoughts I hold on to when the waters threat to start whirling again.
And unfortunately, they very often do.
DEPRESSION
On some days I wake up and instantly know it's going to be hard.
On those days I feel it all, all over again.
The death, the anger, the injustice.
It doesn't matter if I've gone weeks without a hint of hopelessness.
I emphasize every little emotion...If someone is nice to me, I weep and if something triggers me, I fall apart.
On those days I struggle to swim back the most, because I feel like all my work, my therapy, my bargaining, my efforts have been for nothing.
I will never come out of this.
I will never come back from this.
I will never be happy again, complete again.
I will always be alone, because if my best friend could leave me so easily, then what chance do my other friends have? What chances do strangers have?
It's unfair of me, because strangers don't know me and my friends have never made me work so hard for their friendship and they all stayed anyway. They all keep showing up. They all remember me.
They save me in every little way they can master.
And I hate myself because on some days, on those days, I can't seem to care about anything other than the fact he didn't. I've had so many of those days that I even stopped writing for what is probably the longest I have ever gone without writing. Ever.
On those days I imagine a little protective entity up above, watching over me and saying "THAT was your best shot. You ignored it. I am done sending you anyone else."
Was he really my best, last shot? He's not the first one who slipped through my fingers because I was too afraid, too rational, too...much.
How many more chances could I be granted?
Should I have given in and forced myself to fall in love with him so that I could be entitled to my feelings?
No.
I didn't want him to be my friend by force. Sure as hell I wouldn't want him to be the love of my life by force either.
That's not how the love of your life works. I don't care how long I have to wait for it. That's not the story I wanna tell.
And after all, can you really force someone to love you? You can force someone to be with you, like she did, but I want to be Loved. I haven't postponed romance in my life just to settle for someone I don't wanna lose but doesn't make me feel whole in all my flaws. I want it to be unavoidably mutual, playful and meaningful all at the same time. I don't want to be half of a couple people wonder why they're even together, like him and her. I want to be the one that makes sense, the one that someone like me would look at and hold on to a frail hope a little bit longer because...look at them, it's possible.
Yet on those days I can't help but wonder if we were just too stupid, self absorbed in our nerdiness and lightness to notice what everyone else seemed to notice.
That we didn't need anyone else.
But like I said, what ifs aren't a thing.
What is real is that I, for sure, didn't need anyone else.
He, on the other hand, needed everyone but me.
I just so happened to be there when no one else was.
ACCEPTANCE
I'm not there yet.
Not fully.
Every passing day I get a little more aware of how much I've overcome, how long I've survived, how unreal that fear of death was on that first night but also how truthful my worry that our friendship was dying under our blindfolded eyes.
However, it is now normality to me, that we don't talk, we don't make plans, we don't show up at each other's door despite living ten minutes away from each other. We don't leave our favourite snacks in each other's lockers at work or post-its on the computer screen when one is closing and the other one is opening the next day.
We will always have an endless list of movies we were meant to watch and places we were meant to visit together, which we will now never tick off.
Or worse...we will tick them off with someone else, probably remembering that was "our" thing.
For me at least...He doesn't remember any of this, I'm sure.
We're incredibly close colleagues, but I have to work every day on convincing myself our friendship - the real one, the good one, the one everyone envied and someone enjoyed to see shattered - is a long gone memory I will never stop grieving.
No matter how many people believe I shouldn't.
